NPCs kinda suck

[boxcartenant]

What is a fact is that PVE simply is not a big part of this mod. People interested in that can always do missions or visit the areas that do have powerful NPCs, of which there are plenty. But very few of us want to be forced to PVE when we're trying to focus on player-player interaction.

Since when? The mod originally had dangerous space. Afaik, Disco Space is now less dangerous than it has ever been. The only reason PVE isn't a part of the game is because of the more recent changes, not because "that's the way the mod is and it's going to stay that way."

Anyway, you don't agree that civilians should have a hard time congregating in pirate space?
Why does the game environment even exist? Is it supposed to put players into the lore, or is it just a fancy chat room?
Missions alone aren't good enough. If I want instanced space battles then I'll play Star Conflict on Steam. The mods have the power to make a universe that feels like it is split into systems controlled and populated by factions.

We've already tried having significantly more powerful NPCs (was it when .87 came out? I'm not sure anymore).
It made for terrible gameplay and almost everybody complained about it until they were nerfed again. They simply do not fit well into the environment of disco and I can pretty much guarantee they're not coming back.

I didn't say we should have NPCs so powerful that they make player interaction impossible, unless the players are trying to interact in space that's owned by a hostile faction, and their ships are too low-tier to handle it. NPCs don't have to be either "so powerful that player interaction is impossible" or "completely impotent". Why can't we have difficulties in-between? See my previous posts:

I'm not saying we should make it super-difficult to survive everywhere. I'm just saying there should be a reasonable gradient of difficulties across the universe, and slightly fewer NPC encounters.